AMS Exhibits on Capitol Hill at CNSF Exhibition

On May 15, 2002, the AMS participated in the eighth annual exhibition of the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF). The exhibition was held in the Rayburn Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

The CNSF is an alliance of over ninety scientific and professional societies and universities that have banded together with the goal of increasing the budget of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The purpose of the CNSF exhibition is to provide a forum where Congressional representatives and their staffs can learn about scientific and engineering research being funded by the NSF.

Thirty-one organizations and universities set up display booths and brought in scientists and engineers to talk about their work. The informal setting provides plenty of opportunity for one-on-one contact.

At the AMS booth, Andrea Bertozzi of Duke University was on hand to discuss her research on "image inpainting". Suppose one has a photograph that has been marred so that part of the image is obscured by scratches or other marks. Image inpainting is the process of restoring the image by appropriately filling in the obscuring marks. It turns out that some equations describing changes in color intensity in an image are related to the Navier-Stokes equations. Bertozzi and her collaborators, Marcelo Bertalmio and Guillermo Sapiro, were able to use this relationship to apply fluid dynamics techniques to image inpainting. In addition, techniques for handling boundary conditions in fluid flow are applicable to reconstructing boundaries of depicted objects. "It's a synergistic and novel blend of ideas for classical fluid dynamics and current problems in digital image processing,'' Bertozzi comments. "There are many, many examples of theory/computation/physics out there, but the image inpainting problem is really different because it brings together ideas from very different parts of science.'' Her exhibit was visited by two North Carolina Congressmen, Bob Etheridge and David Price.

Andrea Bertozzi with Congressman David Price
Photo J. David Sims

AMS president Hyman Bass and president-elect David Eisenbud were present, as were the presidents of the MAA and SIAM. The exhibition faced stiff competition for the attention of Congressional representatives, as there were some other noteworthy events going on in Washington, DC, including an appearance by former first lady Nancy Reagan. Nevertheless, at least eight members of Congress came to the exhibition, including representatives Lois Capps (D-CA), Bob Etheridge (D-NC), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Virgil H. Goode (I-VA), Gil Gutknecht (R-MN), Rush Holt (D-NJ), David Price (D-NC), and Lynn Rivers (D-MI). Also in the crowd were Rita Colwell (NSF Director), Philippe Tondeur (outoing director of NSF'S Division of Mathematical Sciences), and over a hundred Congressional staff members.

Samuel M. Rankin III, director of the AMS Washington Office, currently serves as chair of the CNSF and worked closely with the other groups to organize the exhibition. "The CNSF exhibition provides a good way for members of Congress and their staffs to meet mathematicians and scientists on an informal basis and to get a better understanding of why research is important for the national interest,'' Rankin comments. "These personal interactions help enormously in building support for the NSF.''

Previous AMS exhibits at CNSF Exhibitions include:

• Undergraduate Research Opportunities Made Possible by NSF presented by Dr. John Bush, MIT
• Computer Simulation of Blood Flow in the Heart presented by Charles S. Peskin, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University
• Mathematical Foundations of Image Analysis and Computational Vision presented by Don McClure, Brown University
• Ergotic Theory presented by Doug Lind, University of Washington
• The Energy of Knots presented with JPBM by Jonathan K. Simon, University of Iowa and Gregory R. Buck, Saint Anselm College
  
  For more information on the annual CNSF Exhibition & Reception, please visit the CNSF website.